


Operation Lovebug

by coriolana



Series: The Adventures of Strike Team Alpha [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fake Marriage, Fluff, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Pre-Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, STRIKE Team Alpha, Swearing, Which is saying something, by far the most ridiculous piece of fic I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coriolana/pseuds/coriolana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wedding bells are ringing . . . for Clint Barton and Jasper Sitwell??? </p><p>Warning: contains swearing, male strippers, mafia godmothers, angry goons on scooters, unsafe pizza eating practices, and ridiculous fluff. Read at your own risk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operation Lovebug

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Coulson's got himself a girl (but I want to make him mine)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3250553) by [gth694e](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gth694e/pseuds/gth694e). 



> This makes absolutely no sense without first reading _Coulson's got himself a girl (and I want to make him mine)_ and only a little more sense after. As you might guess, this is all gth694e's fault.
> 
> Fluff, ridiculousness, swearing, brief mention of alcohol, weddings.

“Do I look all right?” Clint asked, turning away from the mirror with one eyebrow raised.

“You look fine, you little shit,” _and you damn well know it_ , Jasper finished mentally, wrestling with his bowtie. Clint sauntered over. He’d gotten one of the bridesmaids to knot his bowtie for him. “I can’t believe you talked me out of a clip-on.”

Clint checked the room, but they were alone. Outside the doors, though, there was a growing hum of voices as the guests arrived: a significant portion of the Ft. Lauderdale mafia. “I will not be fake-married to a man in a fake bow tie. I have standards, Sitwell.”

“I swear to God, you’re doing the paperwork on this when we get out of here,” Jasper snarled. “This is all your fault.”

Clint widened his eyes into his best innocent look. “I can’t help that Aunt Emmie likes me. I’m naturally likeable.”

Jasper swallowed the retort he would have made as the door opened. “What are you doing in here, Eduardo? You know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” Raul said when he spotted Jasper, then winked at Clint. “Paul, you look adorable.”

“Thank you, Raul,” Clint said graciously and fluttered his eyes at Jasper. “It’s the about-to-be-married glow. I can just feel it.”

 _I will kill you and feed you to the manatees_ , Jasper said with his eyes as Raul hauled him into the atrium.

 _Manatees are vegetarian_ , Clint’s sweet smile said back.

\-----

Surprise Number One of Operation Lovebug was Aunt Emmie’s muscle picking up on the fact that Clint was following Jasper. SHIELD’s intelligence on Emmie’s organization was that it was made up of the usual mixture of toughs, criminals, and hangers-on; while SHIELD anticipated  paranoia, they hadn’t expected Emmie’s men to be observant enough to pick up Jasper’s tail.

Surprise Number Two was Clint Barton bursting into tears and throwing his arms around Jasper as soon as Emmie’s muscle dragged him into the basement room where they had stashed Jasper. “Oh my God, baby, I was so worried about you! You haven’t been home in days!” Clint had babbled, then planted a big, wet kiss on Jasper’s mouth.

Surprise Number Three was that the thugs bought Clint’s “loving boyfriend” performance—or, more accurately, that they were so surprised by his loud protestations of concern that they didn’t notice Jasper looked like he’d been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat. Jasper Sitwell would never claim to be a hundred percent heterosexual—not when it was possible for evolution and science to cause people like Steve Rogers to exist, no matter how briefly—but Clint Barton just wasn’t his type. The kid was attractive enough, especially if you had a thing for arms, and he was a damn fine kisser, but Jasper simply wasn’t wired to be turned on by Clint. Which meant that it was a very lucky thing that Clint was an excellent actor.

Surprise Number Four was that, once brought in, Clint—or Paul, as he quickly dubbed himself—charmed the pants off the hard-as-nails godmother of the mafia organization they were trying to infiltrate. Aunt Emmie went head-over-heels for Clint’s big blue eyes and little-boy smile. He played it slightly blond and very sweet, and within a day of meeting her he had Aunt Emmie eating out of his hand.

Surprise Number Five was that Aunt Emmie was a hard-core traditionalist about some things, and very modern about others. As in, once Jasper had proved that he was ready to join the organization, Aunt Emmie insisted that he “make an honest man” out of Clint.

“I won’t have members of _my_ family living in sin,” she’d said.

Surprise Number Six was that Aunt Emmie had connections in the Broward County marriage license office who could approve a hardship exception to the usual marriage preparation course requirement. Jasper had had mixed feelings about this: on the one hand, he didn’t want his “wedding day” to approach any faster than it had to; on the other hand, there was no way in hell he was sitting through pre-marital counseling with Clint Barton.

Surprise Number Seven was the bachelor party. Raul had thoughtfully hired a pair of male strippers _just_ to entertain Jasper and Clint.

Surprise Number Eight was what male strippers could do with a dollar bill.

After that, Jasper stopped being surprised by anything.

\-----

Before the bartender at the reception could congratulate him, Jasper said, “Double whiskey, neat," and slammed the drink back as soon as the glass touched the wood of the bar. He didn’t normally imbibe on an op, but this was a special occasion. It wasn’t every day he got married.

“Congratulations!” one of Emmie’s footsoldiers bellowed and pounded on Jasper’s shoulder. “Where’s your better half?”

“Bathroom,” Jasper said. “He had to powder his nose.”

The footsoldier bellowed something about them making a cute couple, then insisted on buying Jasper another drink. Jasper faked drinking it—this was what he got for actually drinking on an op—and grinned and acted embarrassed until the footsoldier wandered off.

The acting didn’t require much work. Jasper was already planning the many layers of top-secret restrictions he could pile on the reports from this op. There was no way in hell he was letting anyone else in SHIELD know that he had ever been legally married to Clint Barton.

“Sweetheart,” Clint purred, and draped himself across Jasper’s shoulders. _Speak of the devil._ Jasper knew perfectly well that Clint hadn’t touched a drop of booze since the bachelor party, but his fellow agent was acting thoroughly soused. “Yer so beautiful. I’m so happy. So happy.”

“Any sign of Maria?” Jasper asked. Clint gave a minute shake of his head, then leaned in to give Jasper a pretend-boozy kiss. Jasper thought wryly of the SHIELD agents who would have clamored to take his place in this op if they had known it would involve kissing and snuggling a pretend-drunk Clint Barton. The man had his admirers.

“Emmie’s got eyes on us," Clint said softly. "We have to play happy couple for at least another hour. Unless you want me to pretend to get handsy.”

“You wish,” Jasper said. Clint smirked, then dragged Jasper underneath the disco ball-lit dance floor. The DJ—who was vigilant enough to be a SHIELD trainee—promptly segued into Beyonce’s cover of “At Last.”

“Oh, thank God,” Jasper muttered. “A slow song.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic,” Clint said, swaying in Jasper’s arms. Jasper ignored him and did a quick check of the exits. Still no sign of Maria.

“I’m serious. I can’t dance for crap,” Jasper said. “You remember the Academy dance.”

Clint snorted and snuggled closer. “I thought you were faking for laughs. You looked like you were being electrocuted.”

“Thank you, Barton, for your sensitive observation. I was trying to impress May.”

“You made an impression, all right.”

“Fuck you, Barton.”

“Not until the honeymoon, baby.”

They stayed under the glittering lights for another song, then left the dance floor to greet well-wishers. When Jasper’s turn came to visit the men’s room, he took a few precious seconds to breathe before going into the second toilet cubicle. The USB drive—the one with the worm he needed to download into Emmie’s network in order to track her overseas contacts—still wasn’t there.

 _Dammit,_ he thought. _Where are you, Maria?_

He flushed, washed his hands, and opened the door to the men’s room to find one of Aunt Emmie’s guards pointing a gun at Maria, who was wearing the _tackiest_ yellow-sparkled minidress Jasper had ever seen. The guard’s eyes flicked to Jasper when he opened the door and filled instantly with suspicion.

 _We’re made_ , Jasper thought, and took a deep breath.

“What the fuck. What the _fuck_. Cindy? I can’t fucking believe this. You’re fucking showing _your_ face at _my_ wedding?” he bellowed as loudly and drunkenly as he could. “You fuckin’ bitch—”

Maria, bless her, wrenched her face into a petulant scowl and screeched back at him at a pitch that actually made Jasper flinch. “You call this a wedding, you limp-dick bastard? Where is he? Where’s the man-whore who stole you away from me?”

Emmie’s guard was briefly thrown off by Jasper’s reaction, and in the seconds before he made up his mind that Maria and Jasper _were_ threats, half the wedding party had poured into the hallway to see what the shouting was about. Clint, who had a sixth sense for the moment an op started circling the drain, was in the vanguard; he must have caught at least part of Maria’s shouting, because he appeared in full angry-boyfriend—sorry, angry- _husband_ —mode.

“I can’t believe you. I can’t _believe_ you,” he repeated dramatically, then burst into tears and dove into Jasper’s arms. “Out front in ninety seconds,” he whispered, then spun toward Maria. “Your tits are faker than a spring breaker’s tan!”

“He only likes you for your handjobs!” Maria shouted back, barely hiding her delighted grin, and threw her purse at Jasper’s head. Jasper ducked—on previous ops, Maria had taken out at least two hostiles with well-aimed handbags—then snatched it off the floor and slid sideways out of the crowd while Clint and Maria made an irresistible spectacle of themselves.

Ninety seconds. _Thanks, that’s plenty of time_ , Jasper thought sarcastically, then he was hurrying down the back hallway, looking for the club’s office and digging through Maria’s purse at the same time. The office door was locked when he found it, but Maria had thoughtfully hidden a pick gun in the lining, so Jasper had the lock bumped and the door open in thirty seconds. In another sixty seconds, he’d found the computer, inserted Maria’s USB drive, and uploaded the worm. Jasper’s in-person infiltration of Aunt Emmie’s organization might be over in the next five minutes, but SHIELD’s worm would ensure that they could keep tabs on Emmie and her allies for weeks or even months into the future.

Of course, if he didn’t get to the front of the club _immediately_ , it wouldn’t much matter to him whether the op was a success or not, because he’d be dead at the hands of Aunt Emmie’s thugs.

He closed the office door behind him and made a beeline for the service entrance at the back of the club. On the other side of the battered metal door, a trio of Emmie’s soldiers looked up from their card game. “What’s going on?” one of them asked around his cigarette.

“Old girlfriend,” he said, wincing. “Need to make a quick exit.”

The three of them grinned at each other. “Sure, quick exit,” one of them said, and snickered. “Ain’t gonna be a quiet one, though . . .”

Jasper spotted what they were talking about and groaned.

In the parking space where he had left his nice, sensible rental Ford was a ‘59 Cadillac convertible festooned with tissue paper, a banner reading “Just Married,” and a bumper full of tin cans on strings. The keys were in it.

The door to the club creaked. _Beggars can’t be choosers_ , Jasper thought, and broke into a sprint. _Although they can certainly bitch about their luck._ He vaulted into the driver’s seat as voices rose near the door to the club, started the engine with a roar, and threw the car into gear. Maneuvering it out from behind the club and onto the road felt like steering a boat across Lake Mabel.

In front of the club, a crowd had gathered, circling Clint and Maria. “You think I don’t know about that time you got drunk on four dollar daiquiris and french-kissed the balloon sculptor?” Maria was shrieking. “ _There were children present!_ ”

“Oh, and you’re such a paragon, miss ‘deliberately wore a black bra and no panties under a white minidress at a ten-year-old’s birthday party’?” Clint shot back, prompting some in the audience to _oooh_ with disapproval.

“Don’t you _oooh_ at me—” Maria snapped, cutting herself off when she caught sight of Jasper. Her eyes widened for a second, prompting Clint to turn around just in time for Jasper to pull up beside them.

“Come on!” he barked.

Clint reached for the door, meaning to open it for Maria, but before he could, she’d hiked her skirt to her waist and leapt into the backseat. “Could you be more obvious?” she asked as Clint hopped the door and landed in the passenger seat just in time for Jasper to hit the gas.

“Could you have flashed your underwear to more of Ft. Lauderdale’s organized crime community?” Jasper retorted over the clangor of tin cans and the roar of the Cadillac’s engine.

“Can we get the hell out of here?” Clint asked, and twisted in his seat to check out the road behind them. When his mouth dropped open, Maria turned around, too, and when she didn’t immediately turn back, Jasper checked his rearview mirror.

Rapidly gaining on them—as evidenced by the swelling chorus of two-stroke engines—was a pack of white Vespa scooters bearing pissed-off Mafia soldiers.

“What the hell?”

“Holy shit,” Clint said, turning back. “She took me seriously. I can’t believe she took me _seriously_.”

“What did you do?” Jasper shouted, watching his mirrors as he tried to put distance between them and the angry-bee-swarm sound of their tail. Hampered by the dense traffic and the size of his giant, clanging boat of a Cadillac, the Vespa pack was drawing nearer.

“All I said was that it would be really cute if we had an escort of white Vespas when we left the reception—”

“Are you _insane_?”

“I swear to God I didn’t think she’d do it, and besides, why the hell are they following us on the _Vespas?_ ”

“Because I disabled the rest of their cars,” Maria said smugly, then disappeared from Jasper’s view as she rooted around on the floor of the car. She came up smirking. “Time to make it rain, boys. Hold on,” she told Clint, then stood in the back seat. When his hands were securely around her waist, she started lobbing tulle-wrapped packets of rice with SHIELD-trained accuracy. The Vespa riders swerved wildly to avoid the rice packets, which exploded in sprays of white when they hit the pavement or a Vespa’s windshield.

They weren’t deterred, though. Within a block, the Vespas had pulled together into two columns, taking cover behind the lead Vespas, whose riders gritted their teeth, hunched their shoulders, and flinched repeatedly as Maria pelted them with rice bags. None of them looked happy.

“Shit,” she growled. “They know I’m almost out.”

“Guns?” Clint asked.

“Not on a public street,” Jasper said immediately.

“We need to ditch this _boat_ ,” Maria said, bending to search for more rice packets. “Guys, I think we’re screwed—”

\-----

“So you were outta ammo, outnumbered, and stuck in the middle of a public street with a bunch of gangsters who wouldn’t give a damn about civilian casualties,” Garrett said, leaning back in the wooden motel chair across from Jasper. “What then?”

“Then the cops showed up,” Clint said from the bed. He’d changed into a t-shirt that read “I (heart) Florida” but kept his tuxedo pants on; a smear of pizza sauce marked his upper lip.

“Backup?” Garrett asked, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth.

“Not exactly . . .” Jasper said, then looked to Maria. She’d borrowed Jasper’s sweatpants and a hoodie and was crosslegged on the bed next to Clint, her fingers buried in her hair as she braided it behind her head.

“They stopped us for leading an illegal parade,” she said. “Jasper got ticketed for not wearing a seat belt.”

“Thirty bucks, sir,” he said, and shook his head woefully, then loosened his damned bow tie. “It’s going on my expense report.”

“No, it’s not. You should have been wearing your seat belt,” Clint said. Jasper threw a balled-up napkin at him.

“You’re not my SO,” he said. Clint caught the napkin in the air and threw it back, hitting Jasper in the nose.

“But I _am_ your husband, husband.”

“God, will you stop with the married bickering, already? You got hitched like five hours ago,” Maria complained, then leaned off the bed to grab the pizza box.

“Alright, enough with the fun stuff,” Garrett said, putting up a hand. “Let’s get down to the important business.”

Jasper and Clint looked at Garrett; Maria lowered the slice of pepperoni and onion that she’d been about to stuff in her mouth. Garrett leaned on the edge of the table.

“Are you two _really_ , legally married?”

“No,” Jasper said, at the same time as Clint said, “Yes.”

“They’re legal, sir,” Maria said dryly. “They can adopt and everything.” She proceeded to fit as much pizza into her mouth as was physically possible.

“They’re cover identities,” Jasper argued.

“They’re just as legal as our SHIELD identities,” Clint said, grinning. “Hell, Paul has an original birth certificate. Mine’s probably in a drawer in a carnie trailer somewhere.”

“Paul plus Eduardo four-ever,” Maria said around a mouthful of pizza. Clint flipped open the lid of the box and retrieved another slice for himself.

“We are Not. Actually. Married,” Jasper said firmly. Maria held up a finger, then swallowed what she was chewing.

“If you kill him, you inherit, Jasper,” she said.

“Murderers don’t inherit,” Garrett pointed out, amused.

“Like Jasper would get caught,” Clint scoffed, at the same time as Jasper muttered, “Justifiable homicide.”

Garrett leaned back in his chair, looking pleased. “Well, fortunately, SHIELD has paperwork for everything,” he said. “Even fake-marrying your coworker on covert op.” He raised his hand quickly and stood up. “Don’t ask me how I know _that_ one, it’s level six classified.”

“Maybe later, then, sir,” Maria said dryly. Garrett’s penchant for drawn-out war stories was well known among the junior agents. Garrett grinned and pointed a finger at her, then swept his gaze across the three of them.

“I’ll leave you to your honeymoon,” he said. “Wheels-up tomorrow at 0600. Good work, agents.”

After the door closed, Jasper leaned back in his chair. “Who do you think he got married to?”

“Garrett?” Maria asked, then considered. “Coulson?”

Clint reddened. Jasper shook his head.

“Nah, they haven’t been on ops together in years. It wouldn’t have been legal.”

“Jasper,” Maria said, chiding. “It’s called _drag_. It’s an important espionage skill.”

Clint’s mouth went dry. “Oh, God, Maria,” he whispered. “ _Coulson in a skirt._ ”

“You think he’d stick to Dolce or would he slum in Cavalli?” Maria said dryly.

“I could see him in Prada,” Jasper said thoughtfully. Maria snorted at the same time as Clint grabbed the sides of his face and said, desperately, _“Guys...”_

“I’ll have you know Coulson looks damn fine in a skirt.” Garrett’s muffled voice came through the wall from the adjoining room.  “But he looks better in La Perla.”

The three agents looked at each other, a mix of surprise, annoyance, and frustrated desire on their faces.

“Fucking motel walls,” Maria muttered.

“Fucking _Florida_ ,” Jasper spat.

Clint covered his face with his hands and muttered something that ended with “— _Coulson_.” Maria and Jasper exchanged looks over his head.

Jasper sighed. “Pass me the pizza,” he said to Maria. “And I’ll see if Dog Cops is on.” He nudged Clint’s knee with his foot. “Happy honeymoon, sweetheart.”


End file.
